RCU responds to Daily FT Editor’s Note

The Royal College Union (RCU) Honorary Secretary Aruna Samarajewa has issued the following statement in response to the Daily FT Editor›s note published on 21 October on Page 13. (See https://www.ft.lk/sports/RCU-has-its-say-over-misleading-allegations-in-Daily-FT-regarding-Royal-College-Colombo/23-768192)

At the outset, we do thank you, for acceding to our demand, to publish in full, our written communication, addressed to you, dated 16/10/2024, and titled - 'A concerned response to the misleading allegations regarding Royal College, Colombo'.

By our said letter, we were constrained to take the special measure, of initiating a formal communication to you, in order to most emphatically complain and object, to your highly disturbing practice, of indulging in making unverified, unconfirmed, and extremely distorted and utterly destructive allegations, against Royal College, as well as Rugby and the Head Coach of Rugby at Royal College.

Your most misplaced and unfortunate, particularly vituperative campaign, chosen to be articulated in the most vicious and spiteful manner, was of your own choosing and persuasion.

Do be good enough to exercise due introspection Sir, and, if you were to do so honestly, you would undoubtedly be confronted with the self-realisation, that in fact, the tone and tenor was set by You and NOT by us; and, that too, of your own volition, in order to service, what would be most palpably evident, to even a juvenile mind, as being a malevolent agenda, driven at breakneck speed, by you.

What you have managed to do thereby, most callously and recklessly, with no thought of the far-reaching consequences of your unilateral action, is to cause massive and irreparable harm and damage to the Royal College and all its stakeholders, without due warrant and justification.

Let us immediately place on record, that we are not against or do not object to reasonable critique or constructive criticism, and we shall and, indeed, must, take any such bona fide critique, with all due grace, if given in that spirit and provided that you had at least minimal standards of regard and respect, for the parties or the entity, that you set out, to so riotously, defame and damage.

We are deeply respectful of every person's Right to express his/her view/s and are conscious of the fact that that is the bedrock of a civilized, democratic society.

However, when it comes to an otherwise, well regarded newspaper, such as the Daily Financial Times (Daily FT), which functions under your ultimate, Editorial Aegis and Supervision, the stakes are altogether, entirely different, and accordingly, the minimum standards that are expected of such a journalistic publication, distinctly transcend those of a general citizen's right of comment, and are immediately catapulted and escalated, to a far more intensive and heightened duty of care.

This more rigorous duty of care is rightfully superimposed on the print media, by both the Law, as well as by the general dictates of morality and decency.

One would have expected that the cold hard stare, of censure and scrutiny, by and through these elevated standards, would have been matters to have been taken extremely seriously by you, as the Editor of the Daily FT.

However, by your singular conduct Sir, it is most patently evident, that :-

a) Either you are not possessed of even a nodding acquaintance with such standards, which then places in serious doubt and denies you, a legitimate place, within the journalistic firmament; or it is more likely,

b) the motivation of your virulent agenda, totally blinded you to the recklessness of summarily abandoning those dictates; or

c) Even more perturbingly, that although you were indeed mindful of the responsibility expected of you, that you nevertheless, deliberately, threw caution to the wind and ignored the same and studiously, stage-managed avoiding any prior clarification from the school/its authorities, before launching your prolific catalogue of back to back publications, so that you would be able to Arbitrarily and Capriciously, confer upon yourself, maximum poetic license, for your rampaging poison pen, to run riot.

From and out of these theoretically possible scenarios, which we have identified as a), b) and c) above, the particular juxtaposition of facts and circumstances and the particular manner in which the events unravelled themselves, lead us, as well as the highly concerned fraternity of Royal College, to the most singularly logical inference and conclusion, that your motivation was most definitely the last of the three possibilities identified above, i.e., that you wanted at all cost, to preclude any clarification being made by the school or its authorities, so that you could launch your sensationalist publications, with maximum vigour, in order to exert the most devastating damage and harm to the School and its stakeholders.

You thereby, preempted the provision by the School, of exercising its basic and intrinsic right to have made due clarifications and correcting all falsehoods and misconceptions, and you most abysmally demonstrated, that you did not have the minimum good grace, to have respect for the rights of your carefully chosen, voiceless victim, i.e., the Royal College and all its stakeholders.

With regard to the status of The Royal College Union (RCU), it is in fact the RCU that supports, funds and manages Rugby at Royal College. It is a verifiable fact that other Alumni Associations do the same in other schools that play A division Rugby.

This beneficial intervention by the Alumni Associations, is necessitated, as a result of the conspicuous paucity of monetary resources and infrastructural capacity, available to public schools in particular.

We do stress that this is not limited or unique to Royal College and it is common knowledge, what a vitally integral role, is played by the Alumni Associations, of the various schools.

Whilst we understand that the Principal of Royal College has already responded to you as well, and expressed similar umbrage against your wanton action, we resolutely stand by our decision, in our individual and distinct capacity as the RCU, to have placed on record, by our previous writing to you, our deploration and revulsion, of your utterly irresponsible and repetitively callous actions.

In your Editor's Note, inserted within the reproduction in the Daily FT, of our communication to you, you Sir, have attempted to shield yourself, by feigning selective amnesia, in respect of the detailed contents of our letter dated 16.10.2024, which raised multiple issues; and instead, you have resorted to curating a well contrived, purported response, limiting to matters connected to Rugby.

However, you have miserably failed Sir, in addressing the veritable "Elephant in the Room", as it were, which was the epi-centre of our written complaint to you, which is that you repeatedly, persistently and mischievously, omitted and indeed, deliberately omitted, to refer, clarify or verify, any of the matters that you decided to publish so recklessly in the past, without any thought for the devastating damage and harm that you would cause.

This gives rise to the inexorable and most irresistible inference, that this was your well planned, dubious design, from day one, for reasons best known to you, which is certainly not expected of a responsible journalist, who has the added responsibility, to bring special judiciousness to bear, as he has a potent weapon, in the form of the power of unilateral publication, at his behest.

We do stress that such power necessarily engenders acute responsibility and the corollary duty, to act with good faith, at all times and the fundamental duty, not to knowingly mislead the public, that constitutes, your reader community.

YOU ARE IN VERY SERIOUS AND UTTER BREACH OF THAT RESPONSIBILITY.

Therefore, we do once again reiterate and, cannot over-emphasize the criticality of the fact, that there has not been any FORM OF REFERENCE, OR CLARIFICATION OR VERIFICATION WHATSOEVER, FROM THE SCHOOL OR THE SCHOOL AUTHORITIES OR THE RCU OR THE RUGBY COACH, PRIOR TO ANY OF YOUR PUBLICATIONS, BEFORE YOU GAVE VENT TO YOUR PERNICIOUS AND VENOMOUS AGENDA and we are unfortunately constrained to place on record, that your actions represent an embarrassment to the larger journalistic community, as you have violated all sacred and moral norms, that bind over your fraternity.

As such, the RCU had and continues to have, a legitimate right and keen interest, to respond to any purported, wrongful allegations, made in relation to the sport of rugby, in the school and the other matters more fully explained in our previous communication. Furthermore, and in fact, none other than the Principal of Royal College, is the ex officio President of the RCU.

We as the RCU, are deeply mindful of the right of bonafide comment or expression, but surely Sir, you are aware or at least must be aware, that this does not, by any parity of reasoning, provide a licence to any person, to indulge in blatant lies and abhorrent falsehoods, that result in reprehensible defamation, institutional cannibalization and character assassination.

Do also be advised that you would do well, not to discount or underestimate, both the ready inclination and the firmest resolve, of the RCU, to engage in any further correspondence with you, or to perpetuate this chain of communication further, if necessary.

Whilst our fraternity consists of inter-alia, extremely busy professionals and responsible members of society, NEVERTHELESS, in the vigorous pursuit of protecting the good name of our Alma Mater, which has given so much to us and made us who we are today, and for which we own an infinite debt of gratitude, we do stand together, as one, single, collective body, in the name of our school, to uphold basic principles of good order and to fight gross injustice.

Do also be advised once again, that this would certainly not be confined to the realm of written communications but would also extend to instituting all necessary legal proceedings, in law, to seek and recover, damages from you, and to also, within the dictates of the law and as permitted and prescribed thereby, to mobilise the strongest Regulatory action against you. No one is above the Law - Nemo Est Supra Legis - and that is the fundamental bedrock of the Rule of Law and, you are no exception to that maxim.

Whilst our aforesaid letter, dated 16/10/2024, was published by you, on 21110/2024, we are deeply disappointed with your misconceived "Editor's Note", which in fact, incriminates you further, by underscoring your real agenda.

This only serves to further substantiate our legitimate complaint and grievance, that you are actively engaged in an insidious and sinister scheme, pre-engineered to tarnish the reputation of Royal College and its stakeholders.

Your purported Editor's Note, makes it abundantly clear, that having been made conscious of your duties as a journalist, ironically by us, i.e., your chosen victims, that it is only now, that you are belatedly contriving to seek a form of strange, convoluted clarification from the School, long after the damage to the reputation of the school, its officials and stakeholders, triggered by your publications. This is a very good example of there being no point in "closing the stable door, after the horse has bolted".

We had to write to you, in order to raise our serious concerns, inter-alia, that the School, its stakeholders and officials have been left voiceless, before you were sensitized to the seriousness of the dark depths of your actions; but you undermined and precluded any form of mitigation that you could have possibly put in place or brought to bear, by publishing your ill-fated, purported "Editor's Note", which further exacerbates the matter and which creates more problems than it solves for you. With all due deference to you, it is nothing short of being naive and juvenile on your part.

This is, by itself, contrary to all norms of responsible media reporting and ethical journalism.

We also note that, a majority of the articles, published by you, which purport to make allegations against the School, proverbially "hitting around the wicket", do not relate to Rugby.

In our letter dated 1611 012024, we informed you that no response was sought from the School, with regard to those allegations, some of which pertain to alleged anti-secularism, financial frauds, irregularities in awarding prefectships, which have similarly had a severe grievous and irreparable impact, on the reputation of the School, its stakeholders and its officials. All of these could have been very simply answered and countered, if you had had the good sense to clarify the same, prior to publication.

Now, we do respond to your utterly puerile allegation, that the Royal College Union (RCU) is unmindful of child welfare and player safety. We take very serious note of this purported, baseless allegation, which has not been made by any of the authors of the articles published in the Daily Financial Times, relating to Royal College, which therefore, leads any objective and reasonable reader, to question your impartiality, although you are duty bound to publish truthfully, only verified facts, given the capacity you wield, to deliberately disseminate false news and propaganda, which is also false to your knowledge.

Had you followed the basic courtesy of making inquiries with regard to the player injuries referred to in the articles published by you, you would have been made aware, that in fact, 2 (two) inquiries had been duly, held into the allegation made by Mr. Harim Peiris, by the School authorities, as well as by the RCU.

Consequent to these detailed inquiries, the person responsible was summarily permanently banned from entering the Royal College Sports Complex in any manner whatsoever and furthermore, his membership of the RCU too, was suspended, for ten years. The RCU does not and will not condone any such action and adopts a policy of zero tolerance therefore.

In addition thereto, no sooner this complaint of assault was made, it was revealed at the inquiries, that the Rugby Coach, the school officials and the members of the Rugby Advisory and Management Committee, had strongly advised the parents of Hasrith Peiris, to lodge a police complaint, which however, had not been done.

If you had made further, prior inquiries about the sports in the school, you would also have been duly made aware that, as a part of its mandate, the Royal College Games Council, (which consists of very eminent members, who had represented Royal College, both at the school, as well as at the national level, in variouS sports and not only in Rugby), which is the apex body that governs all sports in the school, regularly carries broad and in-depth reviews and assessments, of all sports programmes in the school, with the health, safety and the well-being of the students, at the forefront, as well as implementing objective criteria and standards in relation to the management of sports at Royal College.

Furthermore, Royal College has always promoted and deeply instilled in its students an important balance between sp0l1s and academia, which plays a vital role in the moulding of the futures of its students.

This is evident by the significant fact that, between 2018 and 2024, over 80% of its first XV Rugby squad, passed their Advanced Level Examinations, and 65% of them, pursued their higher education and secured undergraduate qualifications.

This is notwithstanding the fact that, A-division Schools Rugby is extremely competitive and the unparalleled success that the Royal College Rugby programme has achieved during this period.

We do also state that, as we are aware, there are certain other schools, which have extremely demanding and rigorous training regimes in Rugby, but Royal College especially prides itself nevertheless, in stressing upon the balance between education and sports, in order to prepare the student for his post-school future.

Needless to say, that our students, whether they do sports or not, are the life and blood of Royal College, and nurturing them, with love and affection, is innate and intrinsic, in each and every Royalist and they are taught that finally, it is not whether you Win or Lose, but it is how you play the Game and, as the Royal College Anthem has inculcated in generation upon generation of Royalists, a Royalist is enjoined, above all, to have "Learnt of Books and Learnt of Men and Learnt to Play the Game". This lofty philosophy Sir, will not, and shall not, change .